kitchen table math, the sequel: my thoughts exactly

Friday, January 30, 2009

my thoughts exactly


Last year, two labor economists, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, published a book called “The Race Between Education and Technology.” It is as much a work of history — the history of education — as it is a work of economics. Goldin and Katz set out to answer the question of how much an education really matters. They are themselves products of public schools, she of New York and he of Los Angeles, and they have been a couple for two decades. They are liberals (Katz served as the chief economist under Robert Reich in Bill Clinton’s Labor Department), but their book has been praised by both the right and the left. “I read the Katz and Goldin book,” Matthew Slaughter, an associate dean of Dartmouth’s business school who was an economic adviser to George W. Bush, recently told me, “and there’s part of me that can’t fathom that half the presidential debates weren’t about a couple of facts in that book.

The Big Fix by David Leonhardt
The New York Times February 1, 2009


That's what I said!

And, just in case you were thinking I'd slacked off on my mission to bring Goldin and Katz to the masses (or, failing that, to the long-suffering readers & writers of kitchen table math, who have now been exposed to a couple dozen posts on the topic of Goldin and Katz)....well, I haven't.


Steve Levitt summarizes The Race in 2 sentences
Jimmy graduates

The anemic response of skill investment to skill premium growth
The declining American high school graduation rate: Evidence, sources, and consequences
Pushy parents raise more successful kids

The Race Between Education and Technology book review
The Race Between Ed & Tech: excerpt & TOC & SAT scores & public loss of confidence in the schools
The Race Between Ed & Tech: the Great Compression
the Great Compression, part 2
ED in '08: America's schools
comments on Knowledge Schools
the future
the stick kids from mud island
educated workers and technology diffusion
declining value of college degree
Goldin, Katz and fans
best article thus far: Chronicle of Higher Education on The Race
Tyler Cowan on The Race (NY Times)
happiness inequality down...
an example of lagging technology diffusion in the U.S.

the Times reviews The Race, finally
IQ, college, and 2008 election
Bloomington High School & "path dependency"
the election debate that should have been
the golden age: a NYC teacher remembers
the White House cites Goldin & Katz

2 comments:

DeeHodson said...

I have had this in my Amazon cart sionce you first metioned it Catherine. But, man...$28 is steep!
Anyone ahve a used copy out there?
Dee

Catherine Johnson said...

It is RIDICULOUSLY expensive.

I sprang for it because I was instantly obsessed with the topic, the minute I read a TIMES article about it.

We're gonna have to put together an internet lending library.